It sounds crazy to teach a cheetah to run, but that is our training goal. Karroo was born at another facility in the U.S.; she is now at the San Diego Zoo as one of our an animal ambassadors. Up until now, we have concentrated our training efforts on teaching Karroo impeccable manners: to walk on a leash, sit confidently for photos or lecture engagements, be comfortable during live TV interviews or even fund-raising events, etc.
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One of the best aspects of this blog is that I can read your comments and get feedback about what you have been thinking about and what you want to know about pandas. Recently, one of you asked if Bai Yun and Gao Gao might like to be put together more often, noting that other zoos do house their adult pandas together.
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Bai Yun has been spending increasing amounts of time out of the den, away from her cub. This is a completely normal and expected change in her behavior. Keep in mind that in the wild, the bears don’t have keepers available to them to bring their food close by, offering them nutritious biscuits and vegetables along with their bamboo. Instead, wild pandas must forage for extensive periods to meet their caloric needs. Bamboo is not a nutrient and calorie dense food, so long feeding bouts are in order.
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One of the things I really enjoy about participating in the blogs is the great questions and feedback I receive from all you out there in cyberspace! I thought I’d take this opportunity to address some of them.
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This week was the Girls In Science (GIS) program’s first ” classroom session.” This is the time when we look at the information we have gathered, process it, and document it.
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From the WebKeeper:

Apparently, it seems, we unintentionally caused an uproar with some of our panda followers when we posted some suggested pronunciations of the proposed names by Gigi (”Help Us Name the Baby Panda!” comment #52), while at the same time awaiting for a more definitive listing from our Panda Research staff. And, boy, did we get a crash course in Speaking Chinese 101! As it turns out, region as well as dialect can prompt different pronunciations of certain words (i.e., in Boston they may say “caaaah” while we say “car”). Couple that with the fact that many Chinese sounds don’t have corresponding English (or American) sounds makes our phonetic translations a bit difficult.
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Over the past few weeks at Lion Camp preparations have been under way for a very exciting event. We believe one of the females, Etosha, and her mate M’bari are expecting cubs. Etosha has not cycled since her last heat, and there have been physical signs as well. She has a bit of a belly, and her nipples have gotten pinker and more prominent.
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Now that our little girl (Bao Bei? Zhong Da? What did you choose?) is getting older, I thought you might like to know more about some of the milestones set by our previous cubs. These milestones provide markers for the behavioral development of this cub, and we can use them to assess our little girl’s progress. “Bear” in mind each cub is an individual, and develops at its own rate; however, our girl seems to be following a curve somewhere in between her two siblings. As I type this, our cub is 75 days old.
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Yesterday we collected the last stool sample needed to test Ayana, an okapi, for pregnancy. This is very exciting – Ayana came to us from Cincinnati, and her mate Kenda came from Oklahoma City. This will be the first calf for both of them, if indeed she is pregnant.
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Mata and Rimba’s training is moving along very well. Today they got their first weigh-in after starting the training program. Rimba’s weight is 23.5kg (or 51.7 pounds) and Mata’s weight is 22.5kg (49.5 pounds). Mata has been the smaller of the two ever since birth, but both of the boys are larger than any of the six other Indochinese tiger cubs that have been born at the San Diego Zoo at 4 ½ months of age. In fact, they weighed more than any of the others even at 4 days old! We definitely have a couple of strapping young tiger cubs!
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